FREE NEWSLETTER: Econintersect sends a nightly newsletter highlighting news events of the day, and providing a summary of new articles posted on the website. Econintersect will not sell or pass your email address to others per our privacy policy. You can cancel this subscription at any time by selecting the unsubscribing link in the footer of each email.

Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $8.03 million of stock compared to $8.36 million in the week prior. Selling increased with insiders selling $596.17 million of stock last week compared to $362.04 million in the week prior.

Sell/Buy Ratio: The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week went up to 74.28. In other words, insiders sold more than 74 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 43.36. We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.

With both the S&P 500 and the Dow within a stone's throw of their all-time highs, this big jump in the insider sell/buy ratio could have been a concern if we were not in the thick of the first quarter earnings season. If the ratio remains elevated or insider buying remains muted as we exit the earnings season then the old adage "Sell in May and go away" might be relevant this year. Looking back over the last five years, that rule of thumb worked very well in 2011 and 2015 but not so much from 2012 through 2014, showing how timing the market over the short-term or long-term remains challenging if not nearly impossible.

Insider Sell Buy Ratio April 22, 2016

Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series, certain industries have their preferred metrics such as same store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.

President and CEO Oscar Munoz acquired 19,800 shares of this airline, paying $50.53 per share for a total amount of $1 million. Mr. Munoz increased his stake by 13.76% to 163,675 shares with this purchase.

Chief Executive Officer F. Thomson Leighton acquired 19,546 shares of this content delivery and cloud infrastructure company, paying $51.15 per share for a total amount of $999,778. These shares were purchased indirectly through a trust.

Chairman & CEO Colin V. Reed acquired 7,400 shares of this hotel operator, paying $52.53 per share for a total amount of $388,694. Mr. Reed increased his stake by 0.73% to 1,015,484 shares with this purchase.

Director Charles S. McMillan acquired 3,500 shares of this agricultural products company, paying $87.25 per share for a total amount of $305,375. Mr. McMillan increased his stake by 6.37% to 58,440 shares with this purchase.

Disclaimer Clients of Signal Partners, LLC and I may have positions in any of these stocks at any time. Please do your own due diligence before buying or selling any securities mentioned in this article. We do not warrant the completeness or accuracy of the content or data provided in this article.

Make
a Comment

Econintersect wants your comments,
data and opinion on the articles posted. As the internet is a
"war zone" of trolls, hackers and spammers - Econintersect must balance its
defences against ease of commenting. We have joined with Livefyre
to manage our comment streams.

To comment, using Livefyre just click the "Sign In" button at the top-left corner of
the comment box below. You can create a commenting account using your
favorite social network such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or
Open ID - or open a Livefyre account using your email address.

You can also comment using Facebook directly using he comment block below.

Econintersect Investing

Print this page or create a PDF file of this page

The growing use of ad blocking software is creating a shortfall in covering our fixed expenses. Please consider a donation to Econintersect to allow continuing output of quality and balanced financial and economic news and analysis.